So Far We Still Have a House!

Thanks to the AWESOME fire fighters, the wildfire that has led to our being evacuated, has not made it into our town officially. Our house is on one of the canyons that is still at risk, but not in immediate danger. The fire teams have been mostly able to keep it from spreading around the town. That is helped by the fact that we have a national lab in our town that the government wants to protect (yep I live in the town you have been hearing about on CNN, MSNBC and such). Let me tell you, when a town that has a lab with a nuclear research division is threatened by fire, we get LOTS of help (and don't let the news scare you, the lab has all the scary stuff super secured!).

Thanks also to all of you wonderful ladies in the bloggy world. It makes this so much easier to know that there are so many of you out there sending positive thoughts my way!

On the IVF front, I get the rest of my meds tomorrow (luckily the bank branch that I work for is in a nearby town so it isn't evacuated since Fedex requires a signature for them). Its a really crazy feeling to get ready for work out of a suitcase!

Thats all for now!

Quick Update

Just wanted to throw out a quick update. We have been evacuated from our house due to a huge wildfire. It started yesterday around 1 pm and has now grown to 50,000 acres. It has become the #1 fire that the country is focusing on because our town has a national laboratory. So we are are hoping that our house will make it through the fire. It is unlikely that we will lose our house, but its really hard to walk through your house and decide what you are willing to lose.

And to make it more fun, we got most of our meds for IVF. So I got to drag around my ice chest around with me. Thank goodness we have some friends that are willing to house us and our pup for as long as we need to be evacuated. And really luckily, our RE is in another town so we can head there if we are still evacuated on the 6th when I have my first ultrasound.

Well that's all for now. I usually post when I'm at work and now obviously I will not be going to work for a bit.

Who in the Heck was I Before This Started?

I have been thinking a lot about the person that I used to be. The person that I was before my first RE appointment. The person that I was before stopping birth control.

I have had my current job for a shorter time than our TTC time. So I feel like a totally different person. I changed jobs in large part because I was planning to have a baby and my previous job was immensely stressful so that was not particularly conducive. I figured that by now we would have a baby or at least be preggo so I would be staying home soon anyway (our plan is for me to stay at home with the baby for at least the first year).

But now looking back, my life barely resembles the life of the woman I was before TTC. I was the director of a preschool. I love kids. I love teaching. I fell into the director position by accident. I was originally a teacher at the school. I volunteered to be a teacher representative to the Board of Directors. In the end, knowing all the behind the scenes stuff from the Board led me to volunteer for the job. In many ways I loved it and in many ways I hated it. I mainly hated it because I had staff members who essentially set out to make my life a living hell (I'm gonna leave it at that because it still makes my blood boil).

It was a real job. A job that I was proud to tell people about. Now I say "I'm just a bank teller." I went to school to be a teacher. I am not using my degree at all. Two months ago my teaching license expired. I will probably never teach in a public school setting again. And that makes me very sad, but my feet just hurt too much when I teach.

I don't really like my job. It is not challenging at all (well dealing with the customers is challenging, but not in the way I want). I want to find something different. But I don't want to get a new job and then quit after 8 months because I had a baby. I am sort of embarrassed to talk about my job to extended family on my dad's side. All of my cousins have degrees, some bachelors and some graduate degrees even a couple of MDs. So being almost 30 and a freaking bank teller is depressing. I changed jobs when we moved to New Mexico because there were no teacher openings at the time. I moved from art to preschool. I was still doing something that I loved.

Now I am so consumed by my desire to have a baby that I have no clue where I would look for another job. I just keep thinking, when we have a baby I can stay home, then I don't have to figure out what I want to do.

Totally aside from my job, I'm having a hard time with how I spend my free time. My best friend locally is due in a month. She is not crafty at all so I have been helping her make decorations for the baby's room. I have also been making baby quilts. I have a lot of close friends who are either due within the next month or just found out that they are preggo. I guess that's what happens when you are nearly 30. My cousin who is closest in age is also preggo so I'm making her a quilt too.

So in recent months almost all of my time has been spent on baby stuff. Just not my baby. All I want to do is prepare for my baby. But then I also don't want to jinx myself. I have all of these ideas of stuff to do, but I don't want to do it until I'm actually preggo. So what do I do now?

I am trying to reclaim myself. The self that used to exist. I need to get back to doing art for myself. I need to stop making baby quilts and start working on my own quilt again. I need to figure out who I am, just in case we don't get preggo. Just in case my world crashes down around me, I need to know who it is that I need to rebuild.

Welcome ICLWers!

I'm not very computer savy so I haven't got one of those nifty TTC timelines or anything like that so I'll sum up where we are. I was diagnosed with PCOS at 17. Married my hubby just over 2 years ago. We have been trying for almost that whole time. We did a round of Clomid with no effect and a round of Letrzole with little effect (I technically ovulated, but the follies were tiny and useless). So now we are waiting til its time for IVF. Did I mention that we also have some MFI? Hubby's morphology was 1% so ICSI here we come. But we are getting close. I have my baseline on July 6th! Two weeks from tomorrow!!!

Right now I am trying to reign in my excitment and fear. Both tend to run away with me at alternating times. On Sunday I was so excited and was having trouble not running up to our extra room (aka future baby room) and starting with my plans for when a baby comes. Then last night, I spent the evening crying (aka blubbering) on my hubby's shoulder. He kept trying to reassure me, but he doesn't have a clue. He told me that we know I have good eggs so we are in good shape. But we don't know that I have good eggs! We have no reason to believe that my eggs are good. I have only ovulated once in my life and the eggs were tiny. I have never had a follie that was bigger than 10mm. He didn't know that the eggs that I have could be crummy. He didn't know that some of the follies may not have eggs in them. I know that I know stuff from reading all these blogs and doing crazy amounts of research (because I'm obsessed). So I told him about some of the things that could go wrong. I don't want him to stress out, but I want him to understand why I am so worried.

Hopefully today will be a bit better. I have acupunture so I at least feel like I am doing something. I started going to a new acupunturist. She is a cute little Chinese lady who rushes around super fast and gets the needles in super quick. She is also working to help me lose weight so thats great too.

Our IVF Should TOTALLY be Free!!!

As my hubby was talking to his grandpa yesterday for Father's Day, we learned something very cool. Something that make me say that the docs owe it to science to do our IVF for free!

My hubby's grandpa invented the stuff that the embryos grow in while in the petri dish!!! He created it! Its named after him! It was used in the very FIRST IVF ever! And variations of it are still used today. So our RE owes it to science to make sure that my hubby's great scientific genes get passed on, right? Think he will agree? Probably not.  But its still cool!

Thanks grandpa for making IVF possible for us!

Hurry Up and Get Here...Wait, I'm Not Ready Yet

I am currently bopping back and forth between wanting our IVF cycle to get her faster and wanting to slow down and wait a while. I keep thinking, if this works, we will have a kiddo this time next year...I can't wait. Then in my next thought, I'm terrified cause this could be my last summer without kids. This just feels so much more real than IUIs and meds felt. And I've got the monthly payment to prove how real it is. I am so glad to finally be here and se excited, but also scared. I don't know how to feel. I don't want to get my hopes up. If it doesn't work, I will be crushed. I don't want to make that worse by planning all sorts of stuff ahead of time.  But its hard to reel it in. I will suddenly realize that my mind has been wondering and I'm trying to decide on a name if its a girl. Or thinking, my family in Texas will want to throw me a shower about 2 months before so with an EDD of April 11th, that would be late January to early February. And how do I want to decorate the room. And the thoughts keep spiraling out of control.

I know I need to reign it in for self preservation's sake.

I Survived a Baby Shower

And I didn't get drunk or hit anyone!!! I am quite proud of myself. It was quite stressful planning the shower, but in a way I am grateful for the drama. It gave me something to focus on other than the fact that I was one of 3 ladies who either don't have kids or are not currently pregnant. Luckily it was not a bring your kids with you sort of shower. If it had been there would have been lots of babies.

The drama consists of one of the three hostesses being totally nuts. She wanted to host the shower at her house which is in another town about 45 minutes away from where 90% of the guests live. That makes no sense. So we wanted to have it here in our town. She also planned to hire caterers and wait staff for the shower. She also wanted it to be for both guys & girls. The mom (you know, the one who we are planning the shower for) said she didn't want guys there. She also said she wanted it in our town and she wanted it to be simple. She is a very simple streamline type of person. She isn't into gaudy craziness, like the crazy lady had planned.

All throughout the planning, the crazy lady either totally ignored all requests for us to help make anything or she complained because it would be too hard for her to bring a cake from her town to ours. Now granted, the geography of our area makes things a bit trickier since we have lots of hills and mountains, but its not like the drive from there to here is on dirt roads or anything. She whined about the cake the whole time so we said don't worry about a cake. I would make cupcakes. I had a plan to make super fancy cupcakes with royal icing decorations that match the baby's room. So of course she shows up with a 3 tier cake and smaller cakes for everyone to take home with them. No one even noticed my cupcakes.

The crazy lady kept making snide remarks about how at "traditional" baby showers the dad gets gifts too. Have you ever heard of that? I have thrown or helped throw at least 10 baby showers ( I have lots of cousins) and I haven't heard of that. She also made remarks about the tea sandwiches that we served. She immediately sat in the most comfy chair (gee, wouldn't you think that might be for the expectant mom?). Basically she is nuts as well as rude. But it kept me from dwelling on the fact that I may never get a baby shower. So yay for drama!

Oh and I forgot to mention that in the prep that morning, I cut off part of the tip of my finger. So add a good bit of blood loss to the fun of the day!

I can't believe you just said that to me!!!

This weekend was Summerfest on our local ski hill. They have the lifts open so you can ride up and hike or bike down (there are trails crisscrossing the ski trails so you don't have to go straight down). Then after the hiking & biking the cafe opens and they have burgers and all the local microbreweries have samples of their beer. You buy a glass and can get free samples and one free pint. So everyone in town was there. Small town with not much to do, so everyone goes to all the events, especially when cheap, tasty beer is involved.

We met up with several friends, one of whom is the preggo friend who I am throwing a baby shower for this coming Saturday. After we had been hanging out for a while (aka going to every booth and getting a free sample which means we basically got 3 free beers) we had our pint and went looking for a table. We met up with my preggo friend and another girl (who I later found out is also preggo). She looked at me and said "I hate you. I wish I could have a beer!" I looked right back at her and said "I hate you, too. I wish I could get pregnant." Everyone around us got sort of quiet. Before I go any farther I do want to say that the "I hate you"s are not serious in any way. That is just the nature of our relationship. Well at that moment my "I hate you" may have been a bit serious. She finally realized that she put her foot in her mouth big time. She said she was sorry and asked how everything was going. I told her that I would gladly give up all beer for life if I could get pregnant right now.

So basically, I can't believe that she said that. I really wish people would process what they are going to say before it comes out of their mouths!

Trip home, family and all that jazz

I went home to San Antonio over Memorial Day weekend. As always it was great to see all my family. I spent most of the nights at my mom's house. She even managed to get all my sibs and step sibs in the house at once. That is quite a feat since we range in age from 16 to 38. Most have jobs with varying work schedules and my big sis has 2 kiddos to wrangle.  But we managed to have a big family dinner (which we only slightly burned while playing a rousing game of Scattergories). It was great.

I spent one night at my dad's house. He had been baking bread and cinnamon rolls and cinnamon twists all day. He is trying to master my grandma's recipes while she is still around to coach him. That was the best possible day to come by. I LOVE my grandma's bread and cinnamon rolls! Dad's is almost just like hers. I think a bit more practice and he will have it down. So I got to have fresh bread with jelly for breakfast! The down side was his air conditioning went out that night so I got to sleep in the 80 degree, 100% humidity heat without A/C.

K (dad's fiancee)'s daughter was there for dinner with her two little ones. One is 2 and half years old and the other is 3 months old. Its hard to be around them. S (the daughter) made a flippant comment about how she was hoping the youngest would be a girl, but she should have know it was a boy cause the baby's dad has a pattern. He has two boys then a girl. Apparently he had a boy with his wife (not S) then had a boy with S, then had a girl with the wife, then the second boy with S. She said that if she wants a girl she will have to wait til he has his next boy with his wife! She even said it with a smile on her face! How can she be SO stupid!!! That is one of the many reasons that I don't like being around her or her kids. I don't hold it against her kids, but they are painful reminders that a crackhead like her can get preggo, but I can't.

But the main reason I went home was to see my grandma. She is my last living grandparent and she will be 94 in September. She is not doing great. I suppose for a 94 year old she is doing great, but she is fading. I really want her to be able to meet my baby. I need the IVF to work in July so that I have a better chance of having a baby before I lose my last grandma. Please let it work!

My RE's office rocks!

I have had moments (especially reading blogs where others talk about their REs) when I was annoyed with my RE's office. RE stands for Reproductive Endocrinologist for anyone who doesn't know or forgot.  I felt like he was pushing me to IVF sooner than I was ready. I have had a time or two of not getting a call back as quickly as I had hoped.

I think my doc new that the meds wouldn't work for me after one round of Clomid, but I wasn't ready for that to be true so he went with what I wanted to do. And on the call backs, I can easily understand how that happens. Lots more calls than usual or a heavily scheduled day. And I will admit, most of us IF ladies probably call more often than we really NEED to call. So lots of call backs to make.

Aside from those two things, I must say that my RE's office rocks! They are pretty much the only option in the whole state, so we are really lucky to have such a good option! All of the nurses that have helped me have been super. The IVF coordinator is GREAT!!! She gets back to me so quickly and got me my prescriptions right away. She doesn't seem to mind that I have called her 5 or 6 times with random questions about the meds and the ordering of the meds. The doc himself (aside from being a total hottie) is very nice and always answers all my questions. He always comes up with some random topic to chat about when he is going to do something uncomfortable (which is often since my ovaries hide so my ultrasounds can be quite painful). He brings up such random topics that you can't help but forget about the pain and listen to what he is saying.

So basically I am feeling really happy with them. I just felt the need for a positive post and they have been so great.

That is all... :)